Tail O' the Whale Bridge view

View from the Restaurant looking toward the Interstate Freeway 5. The bridge is an engineering feat that solved not only how to get vehicles and trucks across the Lake, but also the Train. The train was put on the lower level, and the vehicles on the upper deck. This allowed the train to come in at a lower elevation, and saved construction costs over building separate bridges and spans. The other major feat was the building of a curved bridge. As traffic goes north, they turn to the right (East) on the bridge (a frightening thing in a big rig pulling double trailers, having to watch for the bouncing axles as they hit expansion joints as well as watch that each segment of the truck stay in relatively narrow lanes and not strike the oblivious heavy traffic!). This allows the freeway traffic and the trains to be lined up as necessary to transition to land. Unfortunately the Lake has been drained (photo taken in December 2007) by overly cautious and intrusively regulated water resource controllers to insure they will never be faced with excess levels of water!

Tail O' the Whale Restaurant